


Monkey See, Monkey Do

by AchillesMonkey



Series: Child Fitz Fics [5]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Ableism, Angst, Autism Spectrum, Autistic Character, Autistic Fitz, Britpicked to the best of my ability, Bullying, Gen, Kid Fic, Leo Fitz loves monkeys, Sensory Processing Disorder, Stimming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-23
Updated: 2017-07-23
Packaged: 2018-12-05 22:41:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11587650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AchillesMonkey/pseuds/AchillesMonkey
Summary: It was difficult being a monkey raised by humans. Mummy and Daddy didn't really understand him, but that was their fault, not Leo’s. They’d been given a monkey as a child, so they should learn how to raise a monkey, and not try to turn him into a boy. He didn’t understand why it was so important that he act like a human. Leo wasn’t a human. He was a monkey.WARNINGS/TRIGGERS: Ableism, Ableist Language, Bullying, brief mentions of Fitz's dad smacking him





	Monkey See, Monkey Do

**Author's Note:**

> WARNINGS/TRIGGERS: Ableism, Ableist Language, Bullying, brief mentions of Fitz's dad smacking him

Leopold Fitz was 5-years-old and a very curious monkey, just like George. But George wasn’t actually a monkey because he didn’t have a tail; he was more likely an ape. Leopold had a tail though, so he was definitely a monkey. Mummy had helped him make one after Daddy had got annoyed at Leo for stealing his ties. She’d helped him use the sewing machine to make it, which Leo thought was brilliant. Later, he’d tried to take the sewing machine apart to figure out how it worked, but Mummy had caught him before he could do anything. She’d promised that they would look for a book on sewing machines at the library, and then she’d let Leo groom her hair.

It was difficult being a monkey raised by humans. The humans only spoke English. Leo had learnt to understand and speak English, but he’d also learnt about monkey vocalizations from a David Attenborough documentary, since he didn’t have monkey parents to teach him, and that was how he preferred to communicate. Mummy did her best to understand and differentiate his screams and grunts, but Daddy always yelled at him to speak normally. Daddy was stupid. Leo was a monkey, so he spoke like a monkey.

He also used sign language, which Daddy didn’t like, but he liked it better than the monkey vocalizations. Leo and Mummy had found a book on Koko the gorilla at the library who had been taught sign language. Gorillas weren’t monkeys, but Mummy said they were close enough and that maybe monkeys could learn sign language too. Leo had accepted the logic, and so they’d learnt sign language together.

Mealtimes were also a challenge. Leo only ate fruit and plain lettuce that Mummy said were leaves, and occasionally eggs (because his _Encyclopaedia of Interesting Monkey Facts_ book said that capuchin monkeys ate bird eggs) even though he really didn’t like eggs. His book said that capuchin monkeys also ate bugs, but Mummy said Asda didn’t sell bugs, and Leo wasn’t sure if he could actually bring himself to eat one anyway. Maybe if he’d been raised by monkey parents he’d have been able to do it.

The bad thing about being a monkey raised by human parents was that they didn’t always allow him to act like a monkey. Mummy had told him that he was not allowed to climb trees, at least not until he got a little bigger, and he definitely wasn’t allowed to sleep in one. She’d tried to compromise by getting him a loft bed, and buying him brown sheets and a camouflage-colored duvet, but it wasn’t even close to sleeping in a real tree.

They also got very angry when he washed his hands in the toilet he’d just peed in, and angrier still when he tried marking his territory in his bedroom. Mummy had shouted, and Daddy had smacked, and neither had tried to listen to his explanation that it was how monkeys communicated. Maybe they would have listened if he’d spoken in English instead of screeching, but that was their fault, not Leo’s. They’d been given a monkey as a child, so they should learn how to raise a monkey, and not try to turn him into a boy.

School was the worst part of being raised by humans. He wasn’t allowed to be a monkey at all at school. He had to be a boy, and speak English, and he wasn’t allowed to wear his tail. Leo hated school. Mummy said that he had to go, because it was a rule that human boys go to school, and that even though Leo was a monkey, he looked human, so he had to follow the human rules. Leo told her that he wanted to go live with monkeys. Mummy told him that she would take him to the zoo to see the monkeys at the end of term if he pretended he was a human at school. Leo reluctantly agreed to play along.

The worst thing about school was the other human-looking children. They just didn’t make sense. They would talk with each other, and play with each other, and for some reason, they needed to be taught how to read. Leo had been reading since he was two. He didn’t know why the other children were just now learning the alphabet.

He also didn’t understand why none of the other boys and girls wanted to learn about monkeys. He had hoped that if he showed the humans at school how brilliant monkeys were, they’d let him be who he really was, but that hadn’t happened at all. Instead, the human children laughed at him, and called him “weirdo,” and pushed him down on the playground when he tried to share interesting facts about monkeys.

The grown-up humans were just as bad as the children. They spoke too loudly, and then they’d get cross when Leo covered his ears while they were talking, or when they were writing on the blackboard. They didn’t believe that the sounds hurt his ears. The lights hurt him too, but the grown-ups didn’t believe that either. Leo wasn’t sure why the others weren’t as bothered by sounds and lights. He decided that he must have superior senses because he was a monkey.

Leo did his best to act like a human at school, but he wasn’t always successful. Sometimes the noises and the lights and the people would just get to be too much, and he’d scream and scream and scream and bite anyone who came near him until they called Mummy to come get him. Mummy would take him home, and wrap him up tight in a blanket, and tell him it was going to be okay.

Leo had heard Daddy tell Mummy that she was spoiling him when she did that, but Mummy had told Daddy that Leo was just a wean, and he needed someone to spoil him. Daddy had then made a noise that was very close to a monkey vocalization, and Leo had got his hopes up that Daddy was starting to come around to having a monkey for a son, but it turned out that the noise just meant Daddy thought Mummy was silly.

School had been back in session after the half-term break for a little over a week when Euan Douglas approached Leo during break time. Leo was sitting by the fence, hugging his knees and staring up at the clouds as he recited the chapter on capuchins from his _Encyclopaedia of Interesting Monkey Facts_. That chapter was his favorite, because capuchins were his favorite monkey. Leo liked to think that he’d have been a capuchin if he hadn’t been given to human parents.

Euan Douglas approached him and started with the usual name-calling that Leo was beginning to understand meant something bad. Leo started to recite the paragraph about food preferences and tried to ignore the taunts of “freak” and “anorak.” James Kelly came over and joined in with the teasing. Then Thomas Murray came over, and Leo put his hands over his ears and squeezed his eyes shut. Leo raised his voice as he continued his recitation, trying to drown out the boys’ voices.

Then Euan Douglas kicked Leo in the shin. Leo yelped in pain and opened his eyes. The three boys surrounded him. They were laughing. Leo knew they were laughing at him, but he didn’t know why. It made him angry. Leo stood up and rushed at Euan, tackling him to the ground. Leo hit and bit and screamed to let his anger out. Hands grabbed him and lifted him off of Euan, but Leo didn’t stop hitting or biting or screaming.

Mummy didn’t take him home right away. First, she had to meet with the Head while Leo sat in a chair outside the office. Leo rocked while he waited, slamming his body into the chair each time he rocked back. Sometimes his head would hit the wall when he did it, and it made a satisfying thumping noise each time.

The office door opened, and Mummy and the Head came out. Mummy held out her hand, but Leo didn’t stop rocking. Mummy waited for him to stop and take her hand, but he didn’t. Finally, Mummy picked him up and settled him on her hip. Leo whined, but she squeezed him tight and the pressure made his body feel better like the rocking had, so he wrapped his legs around her waist and his arms around her neck and rested his head on her shoulder, closing his eyes to block out everything that hurt his eyes on the walk home.

Leo expected Mummy to wrap him in a blanket and hold him when they got home, but she didn’t. She put him on his bed and told him that he needed to have a little rest. She closed his bedroom door, leaving him alone. Leo grabbed his monkey tail that was hanging on the bedpost and put it on, rubbing the soft fabric as he lay in bed. He was still too wound up to sleep. He got his _Encyclopaedia of Interesting Monkey Facts_ and began to read, lightly banging his head against the safety rail that kept him from falling out of the bed.

Leo wasn’t sure how long he lay in bed reading his book and banging his head. It was long enough for him to read through the book twice, and the chapter on capuchins five times. He heard the front door open and Daddy’s voice calling out that he was home. Leo felt a tightness in his belly. Was he going to be in trouble with Daddy? Leo thought that he might be, seeing as how Mummy had put him in his room instead of cuddling him. The tightness in his belly squeezed tighter. Leo hoped that Daddy wouldn’t shout too much. His voice was so loud when he shouted, and it just got louder if Leo covered his ears. And if Leo screamed, or hit or bit Daddy, then Daddy would smack and Leo really didn’t want that.

Leo climbed down from his bed and went to lay on the floor in front of his door in order to hear better through the crack.

“The school suggested that we get him tested,” Mummy was saying.

“No,” Daddy said. “Absolutely not.”

“They also suggested having him join a social skills class. The special education teacher-”

“No,” Daddy repeated. “He doesn’t need any sort of special education. The boy taught himself to read at two, for fuck’s sake! What he needs is for you to stop coddling him, and to stop letting him believe in all this monkey nonsense. The sooner he learns to act normal and fight back, the sooner he’ll stop being bullied.”

“But he’s just a wean,” Mummy said.

“Well, it’s time the wean grew up,” Daddy told her. “Starting tonight. He eats what we eat, not just fruit. We don’t let him scream or grunt; we make him speak English. And I’m getting rid of that damn tail.”

Leo heard Daddy’s footsteps coming toward his bedroom, so he scrambled up the ladder to his bed and sat there, staring at the door as it opened. “Leopold,” Daddy said, standing in the doorway. “Come out here. We need to have a talk.”

Leopold started chewing on his fingers as he climbed down the ladder and followed Daddy into the kitchen. Mummy was sitting at the table, and she showed her teeth to Leo as he entered. Leo wished she wouldn’t do that. He knew that humans thought it meant something good, but Leo was a monkey. Showing your teeth meant something bad when you were a monkey.

Leo started to sit down, but Daddy grabbed his tail and took it off him. Leo screamed and tried to grab it back, but Daddy picked him up and put him in a chair. Leo screamed louder as Daddy put the tail in the rubbish bin.

“SHUT UP!” Daddy roared. “STOP THAT SCREAMING RIGHT NOW BEFORE I GIVE YOU SOMETHING TO SCREAM ABOUT!” Leo fell silent, but opened his mouth wide to show all of his teeth. “Close your mouth, boy.” Daddy ordered. His voice sounded growly, like a bear. Leo knew that when Daddy’s voice sounded like that, it was better for him if he obeyed, even if he didn’t like it.

“Leopold James, you are five years old now,” Daddy told him. “You’re in primary school. You’re a human boy; not a monkey. It’s time you started acting like it.” Leopold bared his teeth and made the sign for monkey. “No,” Daddy said. “You’re not a monkey. You’re a boy. My boy. And no son of mine is going to act like an idiot.”

Daddy kept talking, but Leopold stopped listening. He didn’t understand why it was so important that he act like a human. Leo wasn’t a human. He was nothing like the other children at school. They knew that, and he knew that, so why couldn’t Daddy see it as well?

Daddy snapped his fingers in Leo’s face. “Are you paying attention, boy?”

Leo knew that Daddy wanted some kind of response, but he had no idea what to say. “Are you paying attention, boy?” he echoed, hoping that was right.

Daddy made the same noise that he made whenever he thought Mummy had said something silly. “You deal with him,” he told Mummy. “I’m going to the pub.”

“Alistair-" Mummy started to say, but Daddy was already walking out of the kitchen. The front door opened and then slammed shut.

Leo looked at Mummy’s face and saw that she looked like she was about to cry. He got off his chair and climbed into her lap, resting his head on her breast. “It’s going to be okay,” he told her.

Mummy hugged him tight. “Oh, my wee boy. I love you very much, Leopold. Do you know that?”

“Love you very much,” Leo repeated.

“Yes,” Mummy said. “I’m your Mummy, Leo. That means that I love you. It also means that it’s my job to keep you safe. And to help you be safe, you’re going to need to be a human at home as well as school.” Leo whined at that. “I know, baby,” Mummy said, hugging him tighter, “but we’ll work on it together.”

It was difficult, becoming a human. All the rules were very confusing, and Leopold made a lot of mistakes. But Mummy helped. She always did her best to explain anything he didn’t understand. Leopold learnt a lot from watching television and mimicking the characters. Daddy even introduced Leo to _Doctor Who_ and they had fun watching the show together, though Daddy did get annoyed when Leopold wandered around the house with a screwdriver, repeating the phrase: “Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow.”

Leopold got to be so good at pretending he was a human as he grew up that he even started to believe it himself. He found other interests in space and rockets and how things worked. Those interests led to a recruitment from the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division.

He went to their Academy. He was only 16. It was terrifying. Then he met 16-year-old Jemma Simmons. She understood him in a way that no one else had before. And he couldn’t help but wonder, maybe Simmons was a monkey too?

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, and for any kudos/comments! Feel free to check out my [Tumblr](http://unlessimwrongwhichyouknowimnot.tumblr.com)


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